I see your national debt touching three times the goverment income this year. Why do we as a people depend on bond investors to finance the yearly running of our country. Why can't we approuch our country finance as we do our personal income.
Well i can't speak for everyones personal budgets, but from my own experiance i have always try to stick to a basic rule with budget my income 1/3 savings, 1/3 debt and 1/3 day to day living.
Now lets apply this basic idea to the national income if we save 1/3 into a national fund through the ntma for investing in bonds, start ups etc. In three time we as a people will be able to finance our goverment. We can made budget decidions on the income that was collected the year before and not on bond yeilds and projected tax takes for upcoming year.
1/3 on debt, we have to get rid of this reliance on investor to control the future of ireland. The market is controling our upcoming budget, we will all pay a high price in our quility of life to keep the investor in china, london and new york interested in investing in Ireland. Their are dury dealers and we the user, we have to break ths cycle.
1/3 on day to day running. Now the big question "What to cut". This can be answer in "What we need" not "What we want". We have to look at the whole civil and public service and see what we need. The basic needed of a people as i see of what we need is education, health, and secuirty.
Education: Everyone should have a basic education level of a leaving cert.
Health: Everyone should have the best of healthcare.
Security: Everyone should have financal security, home security and safe envoriment to grow and live in.

The question of percentage of dividing the nation income into saving, debt payment and day to day cost are flexible. But the main thing is that we don't depend on investor to finance our country but we move away from this model and move to self financing with a year or two tax take in reserve. We as a people have to also look at the goverment as a body that supervise the spenting of our money in fair mannor. And we control what we spent our money on.